Microsoft files EU competition complaint against Google

Microsoft files EU competition complaint against Google, by filing a formal complaint with the European Commission claiming Google systematically thwarts Internet search competition.first time Microsoft itself the target of anti-competition action in the United States and Europe has filed a complaint with regulators over competition issues.

Microsoft claims Google engages in a “pattern of actions” that impede competition unfairly in this complain. Google controls more than 90 percent of the Internet search advertising market in Europe, well ahead of Microsoft’s rival Bing, which is struggling to make inroads into Google’s market share.

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Accordin to the Google representative in a e-mail “We’re not surprised that Microsoft has done this, since one of their subsidiaries was one of the original complainants,For our part, we continue to discuss the case with the European Commission and we’re happy to explain to anyone how our business works.”

According to the Microsoft’s top lawyer, on a blog “As troubling as the situation is in the United States, it is worse in Europe,” said Brad Smith,the company’s website. “That is why our filing today focuses on a pattern of actions that Google has taken to entrench its dominance in the markets for online search and search advertising to the detriment of European consumers.”

The suit charges that Google hurts competition by “walling off” content on its YouTube site, so other search engines can’t display accurate results, by making it difficult for Microsoft’s mobilephone software to show videos from YouTube by blocking access to content owned by book publishers which Google has copied and stored by not allowing advertisers to use their own data about customers garnered from Google on other sites, such as those owned by Microsoft, by blocking websites from using competing ‘search boxes’and by making it expensive for potential competitors to Google to advertise online.

Microsoft’s Smith said in his blog”We readily appreciate that Google should continue to have the freedom to innovate. But it shouldn’t be permitted to pursue practices that restrict others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives That’s what it’s doing now. And that’s what we hope European officials will assess and ultimately decide to stop”.